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Up until recently, Facebook's mission to accumulate personal information for the sake of targeted advertising has operated in a mostly robotic manner. When users load their own personal pages, the social network has directly, politely asked them to add interests and likes in certain categories, and if any personal history portions are left blank, Facebook points those categories out while making automatic, historical guesses about things like jobs and education.

Apparently, automated nagging hasn't proven fruitful enough, because this week, Facebook has rolled out a new, crowd-sourced way to get to the heart of its users' lives: peer pressure. Now, when Facebook users peek at friends in their network on desktop Web browsers, they'll see an "ask" button on a profile's top-left "about" box when pertinent information has been left blank. (These "ask" buttons also appear when clicking through a user's profile on mobile browsers.)

Used to be, if users didn't disclose personal details like relationship status, hometown, current job, or high school, those blanks simply wouldn't appear in the prominent "about" box. Now, Facebook loudly advertises users' selective silence by way of the "ask" button. For example, if I click "ask" on a friend's "career" section, I'm shown a prompt that says "Let so-and-so know why you're asking for his/her work info," along with an optional text blank.

That friend receives a notification with a chance to answer the question, either with a text field (to fill out things like jobs and schools) or a list (for relationship status). Curiously, at that point, Facebook gives users the option to answer such an "ask" privately, as opposed to forcing public disclosure.

We have asked Facebook whether private answers will affect Facebook services like targeted advertising—if so, FB could be in hot, privacy-related waters yet again. We've also asked the company's reasons for giving users such a direct way to ask for hidden details. We'll update this post with any official response.

Update: A Facebook representative responded to say that this "ask" feature has been rolled out in waves to users since January, though when asked pointedly whether this was in the form of the obvious "ask" button that is now live across the site, or previously reported functionality buried in users' profiles, the representative was unable to clarify. Our additional questions about how "private" response data would be handled, and why Facebook made the change, remained unanswered.

One thing I learned in my US Navy days, dealing with waterside scumbags: I am not obligated to do anyone a favor, and I am not required to answer anyone's question.

I will not help FB help identity thieves, nor will I help FB hit me with better-targeted ads. I've already made a personal policy of not playing any FB games that require me to allow a third-party merchant access to all my FB information.

I mean, I guess you're doing your job and getting the official answer will be interesting, but that question pretty much answers itself: YES, they will affect targeted advertising, whether they admit it or not.

FB needs to start to "mirandize" its users: You have the right to remain silent, but should you forgo that right, any data you provide us will be used against you in the process of generating profit through marketing.

That's glorious!People will probably share this information without second thought when someone they are close to asks them. After all, they only did not provide the info in the first place because they wouldn't like it to be public. But telling that to just one person is definitely fine, right?So Facebook can, pardon the really bad pun, zuck up all the info without people getting the feeling of having their privacy breached.

That's a damn good idea the more I think about it. The users will love that. Just some part of the resource being sold might get upset.

Um, the ask button has been on people's profiles for months. Why is this been written about now?

And let's be honest: for all the rage every time Facebook changes their interface, no one ever actually uses the About screen. Only 1 person has ever used the About info on my profile to get my phone number. Everyone else just asks me.

And that's the thing about this feature: If someone is going to ask you for some info you didn't fill out, they're going to ask you whether they manually open Facebook Messenger or click the button for an automated question.

And that's the thing about this feature: If someone is going to ask you for some info you didn't fill out, they're going to ask you whether they manually open Facebook Messenger or click the button for an automated question.

I don't think this is the case. It's akin to when SMS started becoming popular and some people thought "why bother texting? I may as well just make a phone call to say what I want to say".

Not to condone it or otherwise, but the thinking is that if the option is there for someone to see, it strikes a chord in their heads that hey, maybe this is a better/easier way to request it (than the alternative).

And that's the thing about this feature: If someone is going to ask you for some info you didn't fill out, they're going to ask you whether they manually open Facebook Messenger or click the button for an automated question.

I don't think this is the case. It's akin to when SMS started becoming popular and some people thought "why bother texting? I may as well just make a phone call to say what I want to say".

Not to condone it or otherwise, but the thinking is that if the option is there for someone to see, it strikes a chord in their heads that hey, maybe this is a better/easier way to request it (than the alternative).

I also highly suspect that having a dedicated feature for this emboldens people to request info that they would normally not request via a private message. When one sees that something has been "institutionalized", they take it as being condoned by the system, since there must be a reason this was done in the first place.

I'm sure I'll be resolutely in the minority here, but I don't see this as a big deal.

It's a safe bet to say that people using Facebook, on the whole, are interested in learning and sharing at least some information about themselves and others. It also looks like users have the ability simply not to answer these "ask" requests. It's doubtful that people will suddenly be overwhelmed with requests about their relationship status or jobs, given that most of your friends are already going to know these.

I would assume, then, that this will mostly affect people who have open profiles or add strangers to their friends list, in which case they have already decided that online privacy is not particularly important to them.

Maybe it's because I haven't been on Facebook is a long time, but I don't see why this would be a big deal.

Hmm, I'm pretty sure any of my friends would already know this info. Why would I friend people that don't know basic information about me in the first place? If someone has to ask, that's probably telling enough.

I was already pissed off when Facebook changed their "did you go to X high-school" answers from "Yes/Skip" to "Yes/No". Instead of letting you dismiss the question they subtly try to trick you into answering by elimination. And they keep asking, and asking, and asking...

People have been able to request being a family member or friend for ages (to which I deny them due to not wanting to share my data with Facebook).

If Facebook and Google Minus just let people use any name that they wanted and share what they wanted (without pressure), I think more people would share info. Having a "gaming" account, for example, where people could use an alias, would probably be as open as possible. Users could link to chat apps, play games and be as open as possible and Facebook would benefit from the links and use of apps by that extra account. It wouldn't matter if the name or school info was correct because the CORRELATED data is really what's interesting; companies get to see TRENDS with similar users and/or direct marketing purely based to that user. I'm sure users of such accounts would be happy to read ads and posts concerning products and services that they like in this way, while keeping their personal account separate.

Of course, people wouldn't DREAM of setting up two accounts like this, would they?

I was already pissed off when Facebook changed their "did you go to X high-school" answers from "Yes/Skip" to "Yes/No". Instead of letting you dismiss the question they subtly try to trick you into answering by elimination. And they keep asking, and asking, and asking...

And I keep ignoring, ignoring, ignoring...

Also, if you don't go to Facebook that often, it becomes less of a problem. Thanks to Facebook's shenanigans, I went from using it many times a day (and socialising with many people), to using it a few times a week (and restricting my account to only a few close family members and friends).

I was already pissed off when Facebook changed their "did you go to X high-school" answers from "Yes/Skip" to "Yes/No". Instead of letting you dismiss the question they subtly try to trick you into answering by elimination. And they keep asking, and asking, and asking...

That. And the way they keep telling you you need to give them your phone number 'for safety reasons.' I gave them a fucking number, fake of course, and a few weeks later they just ask me again! I wouldn't be surprised if they checked the number I gave them to see if it's real. For safety reasons.

I was already pissed off when Facebook changed their "did you go to X high-school" answers from "Yes/Skip" to "Yes/No". Instead of letting you dismiss the question they subtly try to trick you into answering by elimination. And they keep asking, and asking, and asking...

That. And the way they keep telling you you need to give them your phone number 'for safety reasons.' I gave them a fucking number, fake of course, and a few weeks later they just ask me again! I wouldn't be surprised if they checked the number I gave them to see if it's real. For safety reasons.

They send security codes to your phone number and probably asked again because it was fake.

They don't sell your number, they use it for login approvals and two-step authentication. You don't get spam by giving Facebook your number.

I'm not on Facebook and have never been, so excuse me if this is hopelessly naive.

Is there a way to see the Facebook executive's pages, or the corporate pages for Facebook? If so, perhaps every active member should take the time to ask a few questions to really get to know the company. I wonder if seeing a few hundred, or a few hundred thousand questions would help the message sink in that this sort of thing might be fine for very small groups, but gets a little intrusive at the scale of Facebook.

Years ago, before FaceBorg became so pervasive, I got sick and tired of people saying there is no privacy on the Internet. Well, they are wrong. I worked at severing connections between my RL info and this 'nym. I stay away from FaceBorg and other "real info only" places. While it is possible for people to find my RL info, it would take more work than it is worth.

There is privacy on the Internet, but nobody is going to protect it but you.